John is a retired Professor of Psychology at Duke University. He taught developmental and clinical psychology to undergraduate and graduate students, involving some of them in prevention research focused on young children at long term risk for serious antisocial behavior. John was then asked by a coalition of NIMH, the Dept of Education, and Juvenile Justice to join a small group of like-minded prevention researchers to develop a prevention program to meet the challenge of school violence and violence relating to the increase in use of crack cocaine. His group identified about 600 high-risk children and conducted interventions for children from first to 10th grade. It included training in reading, social and emotional control skills, and involved both parents and teachers. The intervention led to a reduction of more than 30% in convictions for violent crime by age 25.
When John came to Santa Barbara in 2000, he was invited by a group called California Concern to respond to a plea for help from the SBUSD school superintendent to address the issue that 2/3 of the children were failing the state test for reading proficiency at entry to kindergarten. In 2007 working with his partner Ed Martin, he found that the district owned a donated software-based reading program receiving little use. As they increased its use by preschool-aged children, first in a van that circulated in low-income neighborhoods and then in preschool classrooms, the proportion of children failing the literacy test kept dropping. By 2012-2013, the failure rate had dropped by close to 90%. Unfortunately, the program was dropped by a new director of preschools who did not believe in phonics training.
